Speed Delivery

Ellen’s dreams of chrome, of highway sunsets, of always going west had faded into dust. She once lived for Eldorado fins and rock’n’roll, for V8 rides and gasoline.

Someway along the road she settled and replaced her highway dreams with speed of needle-tips and cigarettes. Her ride, a shopping cart was filled with odds and ends. With unpublished poetry and songs she’d ceased to sing.

On her final ride through Amarillo, the Cadillac broke the speed limit for the last time, but the Sheriff let her pass. After all the hearse had a last speed delivery to six feet under.

The image brought me back to one of the classic records by Bruce Springsteen: The River. Somehow the dream of big cars and rides across a continent inspired me to this story of failed dreams.

Friday fictioneers is managed by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields and every week we write 100 words to the same picture.

I still remember the record cover of Bruce Springsteen’s record, and it had a picture of those Cadillac’s in the sand. :-). I read some interpretations that Bruce’s song is really about hearses, and the whole record is about broken dreams, so it came quite easy.

Sometimes when someone is speeding toward their dream, we wonder why they are in a hurry – your writing reminds us speeding towards a dream is better than speeding out after having given up a dream. Thank you for this reminder!